‘Before I didn't understand anything about white people, but now, I speak English’: negotiating globally mediated discourses of race, language, and nation

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which Mexican transmigrants in the USA discursively construct national identities in relation to the mediated message of a television advertisement for an English-language self-study program marketed to Spanish speakers, called Ingles Sin Barreras. Using narrative analysis of the advertisement and critical discourse analysis of a focus group, the author considers the ways in which identities and ideologies of language and language learning come to be intertwined and circulate across national boundaries.

Keywords:

• critical discourse analysis
• transmigration
• identities
• ideologies
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

Data analyzed in this article came from a larger ethnographic study that was generously funded by the Spencer Foundation.

Notes

1. The study focused on the identities and ideologies that Latin American transmigrants to the USA produce in relation to the English language program, Inglés Sin Barreras. It began with an initial survey of 300 Spanish-speaking migrants, continued with interviews with 35 people who owned Inglés Sin Barreras, and ended with a reception study about the advertising for the product, which consisted of 20 five-person focus groups, in which I asked participants to view a TV advertisement for Inglés Sin Barreras, and talk about how they interpreted it. More in-depth ethnographic work was planned, but this was stymied by legislation in Arizona that limited migrants’ access to adult education programs (Proposition 300) and later, legislation (SB 1070), that led to study participants leaving the state.

2. Basch, Shiller, and Blanc (1994, p. 7) describe transmigration as ‘… multistranded social relations that link together … societies of origin and settlement’.

3. My colleague Patrick Smith reminded me that buying educational texts door to door is still common in many Mexican households.

4. In Spanish, the term India/o is often a deeply derogatory appellation.

5. While language use is not the only aspect of Indigenous identity, the Mexican Census Bureau, INEGI (2000), reports that in Sonora, 2.85% of the population over 5 years of age speaks an Indigenous language, and that percentage jumps to 3.5% in Sinaloa. In Sonora, the languages are Mayo and Yaqui and in Sinaloa, they are Mixteco, Zapateco, and Náhautl.